UCB plans to build a $2 billion manufacturing facility near its U.S. headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. It will become the first plant in the U.S. for the Belgium-based company and will produce biologics.
The 460,000-square-foot factory will sit on a 79-acre plot of land in the Rowen innovation district, a mixed-use development designed to attract corporate investment. The project is modeled after North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park (RTP).
Officials from Gwinnett County signed off on UCB’s application on Tuesday afternoon. It becomes the largest investment a company has made in county history, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The site is near Dacula, Georgia, which is 35 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta. UCB’s U.S. headquarters is in Smyrna, which is in Atlanta’s northwest suburbs, about 45 minutes away.
UCB said that the plant will create a financial impact of $5 billion. The facility, which will be the size of eight football fields, will create 330 permanent jobs.
UCB is one of the fastest-growing companies in the industry, logging a 26% revenue increase last year to 7.74 billion euros ($8.7 billion). The company's headcount has increased by 68% since 2017, with a 121% uptick in R&D jobs. UCB employs nearly 2,000 in the U.S. and more than 9,000 globally.
In June of last year, UCB revealed its plan to build a large-scale manufacturing facility in the U.S. but didn’t say where it would be located. The company’s other major facilities are in Belgium, Switzerland and Japan. In 2024, UCB sold a plant in China, along with its aging allergy and neurology businesses, to two investment firms.
“This decision reflects our confidence in UCB’s long-term growth and our deep-rooted commitment to the United States,” Jean Christophe Tellier, UCB’s CEO, said in a statement.
UCB was drawn by the site’s scalability within a “master-planned innovation district,” it said. The company was also attracted to being a participant in a growing life sciences community.
Like North Carolina's RTP park, which is located centrally to three of the state's key universities, the Rowen development is situated near Emory University, Georgia Tech University and the University of Georgia.
"The real factors are about talent, location, quality of life, the innovation ecosystem," Taco van Tiel, UCB's U.S. chief, said in an interview with Fierce. "We're also very excited to be part of this emerging, further growing, life sciences sector in Georgia. To be one of the first ones in and really build it out is a great opportunity."
Van Tiel added that the company cast a wide net, considering up to 15 sites in the U.S. before settling on Atlanta. UCB has largely been using contract manufacturers to produce its drugs in the U.S. In addition to its U.S. headquarters, UCB has a research facility in the Boston area and conducts clinical R&D at a site in the RTP area.
"To add manufacturing really builds out this full value chain," van Tiel added. "For your major growth drivers, you want to own that manufacturing piece as much as possible yourself. Over time you start to reach economies of scale."
At the facility, UCB will employ AI, robotics and automation, producing biologics around the clock. The company added that the site will become the hub for its U.S. manufacturing operations and underscores its “long-term commitment to the U.S.”
With the move, UCB joins several other biopharma companies that have committed to building large plants in the U.S. since President Donald Trump took office and revealed his push to bring more manufacturing jobs to the U.S. Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on foreign-made pharmaceuticals has spurred a wave of biopharma investment from companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Roche, Eli Lilly and Novartis.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Comments from UCB's Head of U.S., Taco van Tiel, were added to this story.